The US deported a man who said he feared for his life 'on a daily basis' in Honduras and was trying to seek asylum. He was found murdered.

A
child reaches through from the Mexican side of the U.S./Mexico
border fence on June 24, 2018 in Sunland Park, New
Mexico.Getty Images/Joe
Raedle

A migrant who was denied asylum in the United States and
deported back to Honduras was soon killed by the gang violence he
feared, the Washington Post reported.

The judge who denied Santos Chirino asylum once wrote in a
USA Today op-ed that he faced "gut-wrenching" decisions in the
asylum cases he oversees, and that he prayed he hadn't denied
asylum to someone who faced genuine danger.

After Chirino's death, the lawyer who represented him sent a
letter to the judge, saying his client had been "telling the
truth."

A migrant who sought asylum in the United States, but was denied
and deported back to Honduras in 2016, soon met the violent death
he had feared, according to the Washington
Post.

Santos Chirino was reportedly killed in Honduras in April 2017,
less than one year after being deported from the United States.

In a bizarre coincidence, the judge who denied Chirino asylum
wrote a USA Today op-ed in December
2016 explaining the gut-wrenching decisions he made every day
in court. The piece was published just months after Chirino was
deported, and shortly before his death.

Judge Thomas Snow, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote that the
biggest challenge was determining whether asylum-seekers were
telling the truth about the dangers they said they faced in their
home countries.

"Sometimes, there is not much to go on other than the person's
own testimony. Yet this is not a decision we want to get wrong,"
Snow wrote. "I've probably been fooled and granted asylum to some
who didn't deserve it. I hope and pray I have not denied asylum
to some who did."

A
picture taken from the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, shows the
Syrian village of Quneitra behind an Israeli border fence near
the Quneitra border crossing on August 31, 2014.Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty
Images

Chirino was ultimately killed on his 38th birthday, according to
The Post. Though he rarely left his home in Honduras, fearing for
his life, he made an exception to travel with his brother to the
city of Nacaome to go to a soccer game.

Neither of the brothers made it home alive that day. Chirino was
shot in the throat, his body reportedly found in a red pick-up
truck. His brother's body was found with his head bashed in with
a rock, The Post reported.

Chirino's case was decided in 2016, before President Donald Trump
took office, but the Trump administration has been increasingly
rolling back asylum protections.

The trend has left immigration advocates concerned that Chirino's
fate will befall many other asylum-seekers — particularly those
in the migrant caravan who have been waiting at the US-Mexico
border for a chance to apply.

When Chirino's US immigration lawyer learned of his death, he
wrote a letter to Snow, attaching gruesome images of the crime
scene.

"Santos was murdered by purported gang members," Benjamin Osorio
wrote in the letter, according to The Post. "Santos was telling
the truth."

Chirino's children, who remain in the US, are now undergoing
their own asylum hearings, overseen by a different judge.

As part of the children's cases, Osorio has included an affidavit
from their father, written before his death.

"I fear for my life on a daily basis," Chirino wrote, according
to The Post, adding that he believed the street gang MS-13 would
kill his children if they were sent back to Honduras "because
they are part of my family."